THOMASTON — The art of decorating wood with burn marks, also known as pyrography, is something 22-year-old Zach Spofford has been playing around with since he was 14.

He’s gotten good at it. When he’s not working part time at the Flagship Theater, he’s usually working on fan art that appeals to him, particularly people from pop culture. Recently, he did a detailed woodburn of the Grammy winner Taylor Swift. 

“I usually just trace the outline of a face onto the wood and then freehand the gradients and the shade, so it looks more realistic,” he said.

Satisfied with the piece, he uploaded it to his Facebook page in mid-February. His friend, who follows Swift on Tumblr, reposted the image. To the friend’s surprise, (and Spofford’s) Swift wrote back via a private message on Tumblr and said: "He's amazing for doing that, and so talented. I'm so impressed."

Spofford said Swift indicated she was interested in commissioning him to do a woodburn of herself and one of her famous squad friends.

“Yeah, that would be a really big deal,” he said.

He seems fairly unfazed that an international star found his work good enough to praise him. Right now, his focus is on a giant piece he’s excited about — the original 1977 Star Wars poster.

He points out the shading on the p piece.

“As you can see, it’s really a lot of detail,” he said, noting that it took a lot of intricate work to get the shading on R2D2 correctly. “Yeah, that was crazy.”

He uses an electric kit with a stylus, burning gradients in some places and allowing negative space to fill out the rest of the image. 

“It’s a lot like comic book drawing,” he said, of his process.

Asked how he puts together a piece, he said: “I’ll go online and try to find a photo of something that I really like. Then, I buy the wood. I used to use pine, but it’s too soft and full of knots, so now I just use birch. What I do to save money for the printing of it, I’ll tape a piece of carbon paper to the wood and transfers the image to the wood, so I have the basic outline. What most people don’t know is that you can’t erase anything. You have to be really focused. You just have to not mess up.”

However, even after investing all that time and energy into pieces, mistakes do happen.

“Oh it happens all of the time,” he said, “I just gotta hide it.”

He’s actually making a small living on commissions, but still maintains his day job for the insurance.

“It’s tough to be an artist,” he admitted.

Maybe one piece for Taylor Swift might change all of that.

To see more of Spofford’s work on Facebook visit: Pyroglyphica

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com